Play You Like a Video
by varietyofwords
Summary: Alex and Jo. Oneshot. Pause. Skip. Stop. Covers 11x10 through mild speculation about the promo for 11x12.


**Author's Note:** This oneshot covers the pause discussion from 11x10, the unchallenged "hoodlum" comment from 11x11, and speculates on why Jo is stripping for Arizona in the promo for 11x12.

* * *

_**Pause**_

"So you just pause?" Jo questions as she sticks her bare arms under the faucet once more. The hot water pours out automatically splashing over her skin and causing goosebumps to prickle and rise over her skin. She wrinkles her nose at the sight of blue Expo marks on her skin and reaches for the soap dispenser once more; she wrinkles her at the suggestion Doctor Grey is offering and turns to stare at the attending as her voice drops low. "During the middle of sex?"

"If the text is urgent," Meredith replies in a deadpan voice as she rinses her own hands off under the chrome faucet, "you say to him 'pause' and you text each other back."

"And Doctor Shepherd is okay with that?" The surgical resident asks with evident surprise written across her face and she lathers her arms with soap once more.

"If the text is urgent," the attending repeat punctuating each word as though it is a standalone sentence. She casts a sharp look in Jo's direction – one mention to remind the younger woman as to how and why she gained the nickname 'Medusa' – and scoffs at her evident disbelief that anyone would be okay with being paused in the middle of sex. "You give your person a special ring tone and when you hear it, you pause."

"But—" Jo trails off in equal parts contemplation, disbelief, and hesitation as she scrubs at the blue marks on her hands left over from being Meredith Grey's board bitch. Her voice drops even lower becoming a hushed whisper as she drops her head and leans towards the woman who managed to resect a tumor based solely on a three-dimensional model. "Like your legs are in the air and you're, uh, scr—"

"Pause," Meredith interrupts forcefully as she steps out of the sensor of the faucet and reaches for a towel.

"But what about—" Jo begins to think aloud, but her suggestion is cut off by Doctor Grey interjecting the single commandment and Jo focuses instead on washing off the soap.

"Wilson, your person is your person," Doctor Grey advises her as she dunks the blue towel into the linens bin. "If the text is urgent, you pause."

"Pause," Jo repeats as Meredith opens the door to the hallway and steps out of the scrub room. She barely has a moment to ponder the word, to repeat it aloud again before Doctor Grey sticks her head back into the scrub room.

"Wilson, post-ops," Meredith snaps as she reaches for the three-dimensional, multicolored tumor she left sitting on the window ledge above the sink.

"Uh, I'll be right there," Jo stammers out reaching for one of the blue towels and hurriedly wiping her arms dry. She tosses the towel into the bin as the door to the hallway swings behind Doctor Grey's departing form, and Jo has to move quickly to keep the door from shutting in her face.

Ripping the light blue scrub cap from her head, her high ponytail unfurls itself and bounces against the nape of her neck as she makes her way towards the nurse's station. Jo grabs one of the electronic tablets from the docking station, picks up the accompanying pen, and begins tapping through the myriad of screens to access Mrs. Nelson's chart as she absently mindedly begins moving away from the OR and towards the patient's room.

"Guess what!" A voice interjects unexpectedly, and the sudden brush of a body against hers startles Jo nearly causing her to drop the tablet onto the clean, linoleum floor. With a slight gasp of surprise, Jo clutches the tablet to her chest and offers Stephanie a sharp glare of disapproval.

"Sorry," Stephanie replies in a teasing tone with a smile as she turns to walk side by side in stride with Jo. "Still a little jumpy after Doctor Grey's late night visit, huh?"

"She didn't even knock," Jo hisses in exasperation as the two round the corner away from the operating room towards the elevator bank. Stephanie offers her an apologetic look before reminding Jo that she got to be in on an amazing surgery, even if it was as Meredith Grey's board bitch.

"Yeah," Jo replies with a wide grin tilting the tablet in her arm checking the room number once more before pushing on the up button for the elevator. "Did you see where they reached the end of the board and had to go solely by instinct?"

"Nope," Stephanie replies stepping into the elevator with Jo close on her heels. "Because I was rocking neuro with Shepherdess."

"What?" The brunette replies in shock as she turns to look at the only remaining member of her class. The question and answer session with Girl Shepherd hadn't gone well this morning; both of them trading jokes back and forth to cover up for their struggle to follow Amelia's unbelievable plan for how to resect and cure Hermann's tumor.

"I got assigned her crazy tumor," Stephanie replies triumphantly as she jams her hands into the pockets of her white, monogramed coat.

"That's amazing, Steph," Jo says with a slight hint of jealousy in her voice. She'll never be as excited about neuro as Girl Shepherd is, but this particularly surgery would be cool and is an opportunity to be on the cutting edge.

"Hey, don't be jealous. You got to be board bitch," Stephanie reminds her bringing a smile back to her close friend's face because the two can be both competitive and happy for another's accomplishments. Bumping her arm against Jo's as the elevator reaches their destination, Stephanie asks, "So how was it?"

"Amazing," Jo replies filling in all the details before reaching the triumphant conclusion with Doctor Grey removed a tumor identical to the printed one as the two make their way down the long hallway towards Mrs. Nelson's room. "You'll never guess what Doctor Grey told me in the scrub room, though?"

Stephanie turns to look at her as they pause outside of room three-oh-two quirking one eyebrow up in a silent demand for Jo to fill her in. Her other eyebrow pitches upward to join the first as surprise and wonderment takes over her expression at the news that Meredith Grey pauses Derek Shepherd in the middle of sex to answer a text.

"Has she seen her husband?" Stephanie questions in an incredulous tone. "I would not pause that man for anything."

"Right?" Jo quickly agrees before glancing around the nearly deserted hallway and dropping her voice low. "So I'm going to need you to text me about you and Shepherdess tonight around, say, eleven forty."

"What? You're going to take Doctor Grey's crazy advice?"

"No," Jo interjects forcefully turning to glance over her shoulder one more time. "She kept saying you 'pause' for your person, and I know Alex offered to be her person or whatever so I have a feeling she told me this so I'll say it's okay for him to do this to me, which it's not. So I'm going to pause tonight to show Alex how Doctor Grey has no boundaries."

"Why don't you just talk to him?" Stephanie advises mulling over the insanity of Jo's plan. "I know you're scared of Meredith Grey, but Alex is your boyfriend and you should be able to talk to him."

"I tried," Jo groans in reply leaning up against the wall outside of Mrs. Nelson's room. "But all he says is that the house has to remain open and Meredith being in his bed is not the same as me being in his bed and—"

"I should hope not," Stephanie mutters under her breath with a sigh as Jo informs her that she needs to fight crazy with crazy. She glances up to meet Jo's slightly frantic eyes before shrugging her shoulders in acquiescence. "Alright, fine. But this is the only time. I'm not going to pause with my legs up, mid-scream the next time your boyfriend and Meredith Grey have boundary issues, got it?"

"Got it," Jo wholeheartedly agrees with a smile and a reminder to text around eleven forty as she pushes open the door to Mrs. Nelson's room and gets back to her work as board bitch.

* * *

_**Skip**_

"Do you know if Zola is in to 'Frozen'?"

"Huh?" Alex mumbles in reply barely looking up from the tablet in his hand. She slides down the length of the nurse's station leaning against the counter and twisting her head in order to catch his eye.

"You know, Olaf? Elsa and Anna? Hans?" She says calling out the names that are repeated at least a hundred times of day on the peds floor. "Do you wanna build a snowman, Alex?"

"Might be a bit tough given the lack of snow on the ground," he quips before passing off the electronic chart to one of the nurses seated behind the desk. He turns to face her jamming his hands into the pocket of his lab coat and offering her a quirky smirk at the sight of her exasperated expression. "Every kid in peds is obsessed with that freakin' movie, Jo. I'm sure Zola is, too."

"Okay," Jo replies with a sigh and a smile. "I was thinking I'd borrow one of the copies from peds', and she and I can watch it tomorrow after Bailey goes to bed. Or, maybe before? What time does he go to sleep anyways?"

"Tomorrow?" Alex questions with a slight croak in his voice, and Jo's eyebrows furrow in confusion at his tone because he was there yesterday when she offered to watch Meredith Grey's kids this weekend. "Oh, yeah, uh, Meredith isn't going to need you to watch them this weekend."

"But I thought she wanted to go see Doctor Shepherd this weekend," Jo questions surprised that Doctor Grey, despite her belief in pause, would be willing to give up the opportunity to have a weekend alone with her husband. "Is she taking them with her? Or—"

"I don't know," Alex bristles in reply, and Jo ducks her head slightly to catch his gaze. She has come to accept how his tone of voice is usually this brisk, but there's something cagey about his reply that throws her for a loop momentarily. "She just said she didn't need you to watch the kids so I dropped it. Hey, at least, this way you won't have to skip out on your weekend off."

"Yeah," she murmurs in reply forcing a smile as he plants a kiss against her cheek in goodbye to sound of his pager beeping.

Reaching into the pocket of her lab coat, Jo extracts the small notepad used for making notes during rounds and flips to the last page. She tears out of the short list of activities for the weekend – watching 'Frozen', playing in the park, building a blanket fort – and crumples it into a ball before asking the nurse seated at the nurses' station to toss it in the paper bin under the desk. With murmured thanks to the nurse, she grabs one of the tablets and begins pulling up the charts for Alex's pre-ops and post-ops determined to snag one more surgery before her two days off.

Glancing at her wrist watch and noting that the labs for Peyton Sullivan are due back any moment, Jo rounds the corner from the nurse's station pausing at one of the computer terminals stationed around the hospital to check on Peyton Sullivan's blood work. She barely has a moment to disappear around the corner, to log into the machine before she can hear the hushed voices of the nurses rising with a fevered pitch of gossip.

"Can you believe that? Lied right to her face," one of the nurses clucks in disapproval as an orderly murmurs in agreement and another nurse inquires as to what happened.

"He doesn't know, my ass," the orderly adds. "Doctor Karev was standing right there when Doctor Pierce offered to watch Doctor Grey's kids because she didn't want Doctor Wilson to do it."

"But the kids on peds love Doctor Wilson," the nurse outside of the know adds. "Why wouldn't Doctor Grey want her to watch her kids?"

"Because she thinks Doctor Wilson is a hoodlum. Doctor Karev didn't even stand up for Doctor Wilson because once an ass, always an ass," the first nurse replies in a matter of fact tone, and Jo fingers pause against the keys of the computer as the word vibrates around in her brain.

Sure, he had called her Hobo Jo on more than one occasion – a nickname said in jest like Princess – but the suggestion that he would let someone else call her that or, worse, that he told someone like Meredith Grey about her childhood just—

She reaches up to frantically wipe away the tears welling up in her eyes, to squash down on the public display of emotion and, instead, concentrate on checking the labs for Peyton Sullivan allowing her emotions to twist into anger as her brain focuses on the shit hand being dealt to this six-year-old kid.

Grabbing the tablet and trying to ignore how the voices trail off as she reaches the nurses' station, Jo asks one of the nurses to page nine-one-one to Doctor Karev before heading off towards Peyton Sullivan's room. She offers a Peyton a wide smile when she finds the six-year-old watching 'Frozen' on the television mounted in the corner of her room, and Jo distracts both the little girl and her family with questions about who the little girl's favorite character is – Olaf, duh – as they wait for Doctor Karev to arrive.

And Jo squashes her own emotions as she confirms with Alex about her hunch, as she listens to Alex explain to Peyton's parents that their daughter likely has a tumor on her pancreases causing the rapid fluctuations in her blood sugar levels, as Alex reminds her to remind him to stop by the chapel for Avery and Kepner after this as they prepare for surgery together. That is, until they are halfway through the surgery and Alex pauses over young Peyton's exposed pancreas to compliment Jo on a good catch.

"I guess hoodlums are good for something when it comes to kids," Jo says through gritted teeth as she watches Alex begin to extract the small tumor on Petyon's pancreas.

"What?" He questions pausing in his movements, but the confusion on his face softens when he meets Jo's harsh and challenging gaze. "How did you hear about that?"

"Please," she snorts derisively, "this is Gossip Sloan Memorial Hospital. Everyone talks."

"Mer, just—she's weird about her kids," Alex replies as though that is some kind of explanation, and Jo immediately challenges him on it reminding him that she works in peds and does a pretty damn good job of it. "She thought it was going to be you and me watching Zola and Bailey. She doesn't know you well enough—"

"She doesn't know me at all, Alex," Jo snaps. "She hasn't bothered to get to know me. I'm just the girl she can kick out of your bed in the middle of the night or call a hoodlum because you let her."

"Hey, she likes you. She's the one who said I should date you. She's just kind of messed up with Cristina leaving and then Derek being gone so she's being clingy and weird about her kids and her friends. Being her person is freakin' annoying."

"Annoying?" Jo echoes surprised about the change in his view of his friendship with Meredith because before he had been so defensive, so adamant that Meredith and anyone else can come over to his house at any time of day or any reason.

"Yeah. I'm glad she's going to see Shepherd this weekend so I get to skip out on her incessant texts and demands for me to pause. I mean, I wish I could skip being on call so I could spend time with my hoodlum girlfriend discussing how she managed to steal four cars."

"It was five," she corrects with a grin hidden behind her surgical mask. "Is that more or less impressive than me finding this insulinoma?"

"To me? More. To Mer? Maybe you should skip on telling her that story."

* * *

_**Stop**_

The incessant beeping invades her dreams causing Jo to press her face into the pillow and loudly groan in disapproval. The alarm clock is kept on his side of the bed as she's been known to be a bit too forceful with the snooze button, and she waits impatiently for Alex to shut the annoying thing off, to pull her into his arms and awaken her in a more pleasurable way than this.

"Alex," Jo grunts unhappily as the beeping becomes louder, and she moves her leg across her side of the bed in a quick kick aimed at the back of his leg to wake him up and get him to shut the damn thing off. But her bare leg slips across cool sheets to the far reaches of the bed where her toes hang off rather than connecting with warm skin, and she stills with her face still pressed into the pillow as she tries to piece together an explanation.

She would have heard if he had been paged by the hospital; she would have demanded to go with him in the hopes of snagging a cool surgery before the rest of the residents arrived. She would have heard if Meredith Grey had shown up last night; she would have been startled awake and kicked out to spend the rest of the night on the couch. She would have—

The incessant beeping has grown louder still robbing her of her thoughts, and Jo slides across the bed with a groan slamming her hand down on the alarm clock to silence. Possibly once and for all given the sound it makes her hand collides with the machine.

She curls into a ball under the covers tucking her legs up against her stomach and burying her face into his pillow as she enjoys the reprieve from the obnoxious noise. The quiet is slowly invaded by the sounds of their residential street awakening with the start of the day, of the shower running in the bathroom just off their shared bedroom, of a woman's voice twittering out her boyfriend's name.

The later causes her eyes to open, and the hand clutching the covers unfurls in order to sweep the mass of brown hair from her eyes. She sits up in bed – comforter and sheet sliding down to pool around her waist – as her gaze darts from the open door of their bedroom to the closed door of their bathroom.

The grumpiness of early morning is replaced by a jolt of all too familiar frustration because the bed was one thing, the shower another. And Jo's jaw clinches as she throws back the covers, as she slides out of bed and pads towards the closed door. She contemplates pressing her ear against the door; she weighs her options as she stands in her pajama shorts and t-shirt listening to her boyfriend and another woman in the shower.

At least, not in the shower together.

Or, so she tells herself because Alex is a good person and he would never do something as shitty as that while she slept less than three feet away. And she tried to be good, tried to be understanding, but anger is coursing through her and her hand is curling around the doorknob before she can stop herself. She's ready to be Perseus, to cut down Medusa with concern for the consequences because this is her house, too, and—

The words on the tip of her tongue die, and Jo nearly stumbles over her own feet as she pushes open the bathroom door and sees another woman – blonder than Meredith Grey, nicer than Meredith Grey – standing near the shower as her boyfriend's silhouette is visible through the white shower curtain.

"Good morning, Wilson," the blonde greets with a smile before turning back towards the shower, before continuing on with her monologue as though there is nothing wrong with the picture of Arizona Robbins conversing with the naked, peds attending through a slightly sheer shower curtain. "So Callie is—"

"Out," Jo instructs forcefully from the doorway, and Robbins turns to glance at the younger woman over her shoulder shrugging off her instructions with barely a moment of contemplation. And Jo repeats herself moving into the room, moving to stand between Robbins and the shower. "Out."

"Wilson," Arizona says in a slightly startled tone before adding something about giving her and Alex another minute alone to discuss.

"That's my boyfriend," Jo interjects sharply crossing her arms over her chest and staring down at the woman who is technically one of her bosses. "In the shower. Naked. You can't be in here."

"It's not like I'm looking," Arizona replies smartly presenting Wilson's jealousy as illogical before adding a chuckle onto the end in an attempt at humor. She smiles at the brunette turning her attention back to man behind the curtain and back to problem she was trying to work out aloud with him before they were interrupted.

"So if there was something to look at, you'd leave?" Jo interrupts as her eyes narrow, as her resolve to end the excursion of female attendings into her and Alex's bathroom strengthens. And Arizona twists her head to look at Jo with features twisted in confusion just as the younger woman begins tugging the hem of her gray t-shirt over her head.

"U—uh," Arizona stammers out. Her eyes widen in surprise, and her gaze shifts from Wilson's naked breasts to the red tile on the floor just in time to see Jo pull her blue shorts down her long legs. "I'll—uh—"

"Out," Wilson directs unabashedly pointing towards the open door back to the bedroom before reaching to pull aside the white shower curtain. And she carefully steps into the tub exposing her bare backside to Arizona and her front to Alex, who stands under the spray of hot water with a head covered in soap suds and a forehead crinkled by eyes opened wide in surprise.

"This stops now," Jo informs him over the telltale click of the bathroom door slamming shut. She advances towards him backing him out of the spray and up against the cool tile, and he watches with eyes wide open as her fingers furl and unfurl into fists. "You want the house to remain open? Fine. But this stops today because I'm the only one who gets to be in here while you're in here, got it?"

"Got it," he readily agrees with a nod of his head before gesturing to the spray of water certainly separating them. "Now can I get back under there? It's kind of co—"

But the words on the tip of his tongue die as she curls her hand around his forearm and tugs him towards her, as she presses her warm body up against his and allows the water to cascade over both of them. Alex has to close his eyes to keep the shampoo from entering, and he clamps them shut tighter as Jo presses her lips against his ear and whispers, "Do you think Robbins will let me scrub in with her since she saw me naked? Or, should I have cried?"


End file.
